Marko Jaric Quotations

Me as a point guard, I want to try and put all those pieces together and make a good atmosphere and team chemistry and try to make all those players better players, ... With Wally, with Kevin (Garnett), with a couple young guys we've got, we're definitely one of the best teams in the West.

Of course, there's no one team that everybody likes each other 100 percent and that everything works 100 percent. Even in the Greek team that won, I am sure that there's some things that didn't work. In the past when things don't work, these things come out.

I have become a subscriber for 'Business Week.' It teaches me a lot about business, and I have really started to get into it. I'm interested in business and learning about how everything works.

That's the point; I don't even know what to expect.

This (road trip) is one of the last chances for us to get in the playoff race. We need to wake up as soon as possible.

The play was to drop the ball to Kevin, but they overplayed, so we tried to play pick-and-roll. I had a wide-open shot for the lead; I missed it. That's my fault right there, but there's nothing I can do about it now. Anytime I have an open shot like that, I'll take it.

We are emotional players, there were a lot of hard words said. We were very disappointed and it's normal that this happens in the locker room, and not because we hate each other; only we were just frustrated with what happened and we knew that we were going to be torn apart by the newspapers and by the people in the coming days.

There is something that has become part of my routine that I eat two or three times a week. Sushi. It exists in Europe but isn't very popular, and especially in L.A., I started eating it. It's both tasty and healthy.

We might have some lags in the offense because we are trying to really hustle on defense, ... I know we're going to get to that point where our legs are going to come back and we're going to be effective on both sides of the court.

There's no recipe for winning. I can tell you right now five teams that are in the playoff race that have definitely less quality (players) than we do. But you know what? They have chemistry. It's not only about having the 10 best players in the league. It's about having chemistry. That's what we couldn't find this season.

I used to dye my hair different colors and have crazy periods, especially early in my career when I played in Italy.

Definitely I did need a change of scenery,

It's exciting. I love to play Miami on New Year's. Why not? It's better than playing somewhere else. I'm going to have a lot of friends coming to the game. I think we're all excited for the game.

It's not the way to talk to and pull yourself from the crisis,

It's tough, we lost the game and (the fans) were very, very tough on us, ... Because we were like a dream team 10 years ago, much better than other teams five or 10 years ago, the fans are used to winning. Now, people in Serbia and Montenegro can't realize why we don't win so easy. ... Mentally, it was exhausting though.

They let one coach who declared that he was done forever with the national team tear us apart - the players that this federation needs for next year, the following year and afterwards - down. Nobody stood up for the players and protected players from all this stuff.

I'm very angry about everything that happened here. I am the kind of man that doesn't run away from responsibility and if they think I did something for my team not to win, and if it was true, then I would take responsibility.

I'm just trying to play through this. I was basically sitting on the bench for the last two months, so I'm still excited to get out there and play.

Important win, knowing that we lost eight of that last 10 games we played. We've got a couple of tough games on the road coming up, so definitely this was a must-win.

I lived in L.A. for four years, and basically, every corner you go to, or in a restaurant, you can't even find people from the same background.

I really hope so. I think despite our disappointing EuroBasket, we deserve to defend the World Championship title. And I hope that we can do better. Several things need to change in order for me to consider playing for the national team. At this time I'm very angry but we will see what happens.

I played here for three years and I respected this team. I did everything I could for this team and I have nothing bad to say about them. We just split up. I wanted to go to a team with a winning mentality that's ready to win.